Clean and Simple
by xooxu
Summary: Riku has never lived anywhere longer than eight months since he was four; Sora has never live anywhere but the islands. Everyone needs a friend. Follows the original plot, Possible OOC, no Yaoi


**A/N:** Well, hello. No, I'm still alive. Just tired. If you care enough to see was the heck was up with the huge time gap (two months, I think), go look at my profile. I've been kinda sad and stuff, but it's FINALLY summer

**Update: **I went back and reread the story recently and saw a lot of grammar and one or two spelling mistakes, so I went and revised it a little. Not much else was changed. Let me know what you think if you read the first draft, too. I haven't done much else with the story, but I think revising it was a great way to get me back in the mood.

_-- -- --_

_The night air was crisp and cool, holding the darkness it entranced hostage to the cold stillness. It was a perfect night, so the silver haired teen thought, lying on his back and simply staring up at nothing. He was in the middle of nowhere, or maybe in the middle of somewhere. He couldn't tell what made a place "somewhere", or if the neatly made crossing dirt roads and low cut grass, dark green/blue in the night, was enough to make this place "somewhere". Then again, he'd been nowhere before. It was nothing like "nowhere". Nowhere was black, empty, and it held absolutely nothing but a large dark void. "Nowhere" always had _something_. It always held something of some importance, to which extent it would not be there if it were not important. And if it didn't hold anything, it wouldn't have any people to call it "nowhere", for it was nearly impossible for the silver haired teen to get to nowhere, and it would be much harder for anyone other than him. So, the boy supposed he was in the middle of somewhere. Maybe not "somewhere", but the boy didn't want to be "somewhere"._

_He laughed at his random thought (as if it was important), and stared up into the night, gazing into an everlasting darkness that was not so everlasting. He'd seen the worlds it held, and the dangers that faced them. He had once been one of those dangers. _

_He couldn't find a familiar star, since he had, before, stared up from a sandy beach that had also been in the middle of "nowhere" and somewhere. And before he had his best friend to talk to as he aligned stars into awkward shapes that were supposed to make figures that he couldn't understand. But he was not on that beach, or even on the world it called home, _he_ called home. He was somewhere else entirely, and he had no idea where._

-- -- --

Sora sighed, the sweet, salty, ocean air filling his lungs before releasing it all with a loud "aah". He was doing nothing, as he had over the past months that filled his summer holiday. He felt lucky that his school followed the American tradition rather than the Japanese tradition of summer. He was shorter than some, and thin, but with a bit more strength than the next boy. He had a tan from living on an island, and spiky brown hair. His eyes mimicked the small, rushing waves before him with a deep, shiney blue, and he held a smile that made all the girls his age giggle. He was young, with a cute face that still held a small amount of baby fat, making it all the cuter. But there was something about his eyes that belied the innocent smile and laughter of a small child, a certain knowledge that no one could yet understand, not even the boy.

The boy was only nine, but, strangely he knew his ins and outs of things. It was pure intuition, and he didn't really understand half of what he knew. He knew the best way to wield a sword, and how to fall from high distances; he knew that if you kill someone, you would feel this intolerable guilt, and he knew that people who won't listen to you at all had something happen to them. He didn't know why he knew this, he just supposed this had all happened to someone he knew when he was younger.

The brunette was sitting along the beach of his home, his back yard that overlooked a portion of a seemingly endless sea that held what he did not care to know. Right now his thoughts were full of the appearance of a strange new boy, who seamed so distant towards everyone. The first time Sora saw him, he was positive that the boy was a girl. With long silver hair and pretty eyes, Sora was so surprised when his parents introduced him as "Uminako-san's son, Riku-kun."

Riku was taller than Sora, which wasn't uncommon, and almost a year older, ten months or so. His shoulder length hair was a shiny, straight silver, and his teal eye held the same knowing look as Sora's. He was slightly paler than the younger boy, and he had grown out of a young child's face, and was more handsome than cute, even at his age. He hardly smiled, and his eyes looked sad when Sora met him. He reminded him of a poem his father liked to read, a haiku that talked about the beauty of sad rain. He lived alone in the biggest house on the island, with a nanny that came to his house everyday, and a live-in maid. At the moment, Sora was deciding that the ten year old boy needed a friend.

--

"Riku, there's someone here to see you," the nanny, a small woman named Kimaki that always held a slightly stern face but caring eyes, called from the front lobby.

Riku was in the main room, which his father, currently far away on a business trip for about another month, had paid to be grandly decorated in a country, yellow and blue theme. He lay stomach down, waving his legs in the air behind him, on the yellow wood planked floor and was drawing with color pencils random sights he'd seen on the island, and pictures of the big cities he'd seen before. He'd live in so many places, since his father always moved around on business, and the island was so alien to him. He's seen a beach before, but it was a lake, not an ocean, and it was no where near as pretty as the water and sand that surrounded his new home.

Drawing was only one way Riku had tried to cure boredom in his new home, and still he had several messy pictures of blue water and sand, and some of the people that lived on the island that he's seen when he first moved in a week ago. He also had several shell bracelets he'd made from shells and rocks he'd found. He hadn't really talked to anyone other Kimaki, the maid (Bikotoria, who demanded from Riku to be called Bikko-Chan, since Bikotoria-san made her feel old), and his father on the phone, and so someone coming over was a surprise.

Sora walked into the big room and saw the boy laying on the floor, and nearly laughed at Riku's confused look. "Hi, I'm Sora, remember me?"

Riku thought for a second, "The boy who looked so surprised to hear I was a boy? I remember you." Riku shifted to an upright sitting position, his knees bent under him, and gave the small brunette boy a confused smile, "So ... why are you here?"

"Well, no one's seen you since last week. I thought I'd make sure you were alive," Sora walked around a big yellow couch with blue throw pillows. "Whacha drawin'?" Sora asked looking at the colored picture in front of Riku. It looked like a wave on the sand, and wasn't bad at all, very good for his age, to be honest.

"Nothing. I was just bored."

There was a silence that was on the balance of awkward and comfortable. Sora looked through some of the pictures, silently identifying things and people he knew, and Riku eventually went back to drawing. A small shuffle made Riku look up and he saw that Sora had lay down as well and was attempting to draw, too. But Sora's clumsy strokes and awkward colors looked nothing like Riku amateur artistry.

They stayed like that for what seemed like hours to them both, Riku sometimes getting up to get paper, Sora shuffling through colors. It was a phone call that broke the silence first, from Riku's aunt, calling to see how move was going, and it held a very short conversation between Riku and herself. After that, any tension seem to relax, and Sora started pointing out pictures that Riku had draw of people. Riku listened, trying to remember the gossip and rumors about some girl, and the sports other boys played.

"What this a picture of?" Sora asked holding a picture of Riku and some other children standing in a city.

"That was when I lived in Hallow Bastion. I was young, but it was the longest I've been in one place so far. I was there until I was four. Since then, I've been moving a lot off the main land. I can't remember much about Hollow Bastion, but the name is always there. Along with these faces."

Sora looked at the people. It was Riku and two older looking boys, one blonde, one brunette, maybe in their early teens, and a black haired girl, only a couple years older than Riku, and another girl, a brunette, a little younger than the older boys. But what caught his eye was a girl smaller than Riku with red hair and blue eyes, that looked extremely similar to ...

"Kairi. That looks like Kairi."

"Who?" Riku said looking over at the picture. "The red-head?"

"Yeah. She looks like a girl that lives on the island. Kairi. She's kinda bossy, and a loud mouth."

"Huh? Weird." Riku couldn't remember much of anything from Hollow Bastion. He remembered that the town was destroyed a year later, after he moved, but he had only heard that from his father. Something told him that the girl in the picture was a lot like how Sora had just described, but he couldn't be sure.

The picture was forgotten soon, though, when Kimaki came in with sea-salt ice cream, something Riku was unfamiliar, but Sora seamed to love.

"You boys are awfully quiet. Maybe Sora could show you around, Riku? You're always inside; it would do you some good to get out sometime."

Sora smiled, already thinking of the best places to take Riku.


End file.
